A Bloody Mess

Blood vessels are our vital internal plumbing, carrying oxygen and nutrients to every part of the body. This complex pipework starts growing as we develop in the womb, but sometimes the blood vessels fail to form properly, which can lead to pregnancy loss. To find out more about what’s going on, scientists are growing these mouse blood vessel cells in the lab. The ones in the top panel have come from a healthy mouse and form a neat, organised layer. But the cells underneath have come from an animal with a faulty version of a gene called Rasa3 and are chaotic and disorganised, and embryos carrying the same genetic fault will die halfway through development. Revealing these hidden biological pathways is helping researchers to understand more about how healthy blood vessels develop and grow, and highlighting new ways to help fix this faulty biological plumbing when it doesn’t work properly.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

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Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image from work by Patricia Molina-Ortiz and Tanguy Orban
• GIGA-Molecular Biology of Diseases, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Genetics, January 2018